"Perspectives on NOW" by John Pitman Weber

The Fr. Michael E. Komechak, O.S.B., Art Gallery is hosting a powerful exhibition as the opener of its Fall 2015 season. Chicago artist/muralist, John Pitman Weber, presents a commanding tour de force, showing his very rich and deep talents, brings the viewer a wide range of topics for our discussion. Weber is displaying over twenty five prints, drawings and paintings of his observations on our current culture.

Starting off the exhibition is a series of prints on migrants and prisoners. These life-sized woodcuts are beautifully done, and as we walk up to them, we are made to become one of them. Their scale takes us in with the subject. We can raise our hands in submission, or we can hold onto the cold metal barbed wire fencing which confines us in these tight, narrow compositions. They make us uncomfortable. We see the tension on the migrant's face, her large anxious eyes mirror our own and we feel what she is going through. We can understand her unknown and uncertain future.

on Weber's 'barbed wire' series talks about the futility of our country's miriad of bordering and dividing devices used to scare away those who would dare enter the country. Of course this is an issue brought up repeatedly by the GOP and it comes 'round again and again in every presidential election. Weber's take on the subject is both 'thorny' for lack of a better word, and playful. His life-sized scales of the US Border Patrol's choice of razor barbed wire, intermingled with the less threatening use of 'wrapped star' barbed wire one could find along the edge of every farmer's property in the country, is both imposing and mesmerizing.

Weber doesn't define the place where one would really see this monstrously dangerous border device. He lets us look at it up close, and if we dare, we feel we can even reach out to touch it. The drawing of the barbs are truly menacing. Still, Weber has taken us from the literalness of his intertwining barbed wire compositions to make them a lyrical dance of line, or a realistic version of an abstract expressionist painting. Pollock, Kline and Mitchell would be proud.

Another theme of Weber's work is his oil refinery series. Clean, bold linear images of tubular cones and smokestacks. The message seems to be, 'Hey, when are you going to wake up to the fact we are depleting our natural resources?' In one sense it would appear that the oil refineries are no different than a milking machine used to pump breast milk from a mother, or a dairy cow. In both scenarios, the draining of the planet's resources is chronic, unstoppable machine.

Weber's paintings are a group of tapestry-like canvases that harbor small secret compartments. Each compartment tells a tale, like drawers in an old roll-top desk in your grandfather's attic. They each contain, however, a slice of life, a current event, a truth that we know and may not want to see the whole picture, so the artist ingeniously breaks them up into smaller fragments, and we see snippets of the truth. The question we have to ask ourselves, is how much do we want or choose to know? Spies, drones, cameras in the face, boots on the ground, piles of dead bodies, shielding our eyes, watching war flicks in movie theaters and pretending it isn't so. All of these scenarios Weber confronts and presents to us. All of it is real, folks. All of it.

Again, the question we must ask ourselves is how much do we want or need to know? Weber pushes it all in our faces and makes us see what he sees. Now that you have seen the truth, what will you do? Additional writing on Weber's prints can be found at www.thatsinkedup.blogspot.com The exhibition runs August 24 through October 10, 2015. Weber will give a lecture for the public during his reception, on Saturday, September 12, starting at 2:00 p.m. For more information about Weber and his work visit his website at jpweberartist.com Gallery hours are Monday - Friday 11:00 am - 4:00 pm, Saturday 11:00 am - 3:00 pm, and by appt. Please visit the Komechak Art Gallery webpage at www.ben.edu/Artgallery for more information on this exhibition and the gallery's other programs.